Introductions and Current Status

[Lee Reynolds]

Did Bill Gates chastise you for stealing that BASIC interpreter?

 

 

Lee Reynolds

Tech Support Analyst Sr

ASU Advanced Computing Center

a2c2.asu.edu <http://hpc.asu.edu/> 

 

GWC-178

480.965.9460 (Office)

480.458.7434 (Mobile)

 

 

From: plug-discuss-bounces at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
[mailto:plug-discuss-bounces at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us] On Behalf Of
Dazed_75
Sent: Tuesday, November 15, 2011 11:27 AM
To: Main PLUG discussion list
Subject: Re: Introductions and Current Status

 

ROFL !!!

I got my start in High School when the National Science Foundation
decided to start a revolutionary thing called Computer Math for
secondary schools.  We started by learning how to do math in binary and
then progressed to binary logic.  By the middle of the 1st year we were
writing Fortran IV for the Univac (?) 1600 at the university.  We wrote
code on coding paper, our teacher would take it to the University where
some poor schmuck would keypunch it into IBM cards while the teacher
learned what to teach us the next week.

It was maybe 7 years later I got my first computer.  A Technical Design
Labs Xitan Z80 kit with 8 KB memory and front panel switches and light
for I/O.  You would write little programs on paper and enter each byte
into memory with the switches and HOPE you made no errors!  It did come
with BASIC on a paper tape, but you had to build the paper tape reader
which I never did.  

I converted a TV into a monitor and bought a surplus keyboard.   They
announced a way to convert an audio cassette player/recorder into mass
storage and you could get an assembler and BASIC on audio tapes.  You
had to enter an IPL program via the switches in order to load from the
tape.  But after that is was fun and mostly easy to write extensions to
BIOS for the tape and burn a new BIOS EEPROM that understood how to use
the tape.

It was the cat's meow when I moved up to 64 KB of RAM and I thought I
was in 7th heaven when I bought dual 8" double sided double density
floppy drives for $2500.  I tried to add a 10 MB hard drive a couple of
years later, but never got it to work.  I never did find out if the
problem was the drive, the controller, or the BIOS extension I was
writing.

Now that all sounds very primitive to you all, but I did the billing for
my employer on that system and that was around $1 million per month
where the units of billing averaged one cent each (though a LOT of
them).  Some years later I bought the very first IBM AT to be delivered
to Denver.  I do not remember when I first tried Linux.  I just remember
it was a very early Red Hat and I spent maybe a month of evenings trying
to get it to work.

So believe me when I tell you that ALL distributions work well compared
to those days!
-- 
Dazed_75 a.k.a. Larry

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain
occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive.
  - Thomas Jefferson

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